


we intertwined

by strikinglight



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 11:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: Three strands. Left over the middle, right over the middle. This is your life passing through mine. This is how I hold on to you.Tana learns to braid.





	we intertwined

**i.**

 

“Sit still,” Syrene says. They are sitting on the forest floor and she is braiding Tana’s hair into two long tails, forward over her shoulders so Tana can see what she is doing. _Left over the middle. Right over the middle._

In the green slanting light of the afternoon the trees overhead are making shadows on the ground, on Tana’s knees, on the face of Syrene’s sister Vanessa as she sits close and watches.

Vanessa is ten, Tana’s age, and Syrene fourteen. Tana wonders if to a stranger going by she might pass as their sister too, or their friend, and not just some strange girl with no name they’d only met that morning on the way back from the market and spent the whole day teaching the names of flowers. It’s certainly something she’d wish on a dandelion for, the words already on the tip of her tongue, the chance just to be a person. Never mind that the color of her hair would give the truth away.

“She pulls,” Tana tells Vanessa, but she’s smiling. Back at the palace it takes ages to do her hair because the maids insist on going slow, picking carefully at every knot until she’s dozing in her chair. Syrene’s hands are brisk and sure and have no nonsense about them at all.

“My sister is strong,” Vanessa answers, solemn. “She has a firm hand with a shepherd’s crook.”

“You might give me fewer reasons to turn that hand on you, little bird.”

Syrene’s laughing when she says it, so she can’t possibly mean it. Tana can’t imagine anyone raising a hand to Vanessa, let alone her sister who smiles at her like she’s hung the stars in the sky. Vanessa never wanders off the path and speaks little and chooses her words carefully, but once in a while Syrene will say something like this, make some joke, and a grin will break wide and bright across her face in answer. All these things are so clear even if Tana’s known them just a day, these two girls who look like the forest; if she could stay forever she’s sure she’d have plenty of chances to find out the rest of what they are like.

The girls hear them before they see them—voices in the distance, the sound of hooves striking the earth, and then wings.

“Is that the knights riding?” Syrene’s hands go still. When Tana turns she sees her tilting her head, listening. Vanessa too. “I wonder why.”

Tana knows that it is. She knows that she’s the reason. Instead she says, “I see more flowers down that way,” and points to a bend in the path that slopes down and disappears between the trees.

 

* * *

 

**ii.**

 

Tana’s father lets her accompany him to the training grounds on her thirteenth birthday, to meet the newest of the pegasus knights. She insists it’s the only thing she wants, does not know how to tell him yet that what she _really_ wants is to fly.

When Tana alights from the carriage she sees them formed up and ready, ranged row on row like an army with banners. She isn’t looking for Syrene, but catches sight of her in the ranks immediately—it’s her hair, long and loose, still so like the forest in Tana’s memory. It’s also the way she smiles when Tana trips over her own feet in her bewilderment, hides it quickly by pinching her lips together while all around her every other young knight goes pale with dismay.

“Mind your step,” her father warns, his grip on her arm the only thing between her and the stones underfoot she would have crashed into facefirst.

“I’m fine, Father.” Tana finds her footing. Her thoughts are already elsewhere.

Tana has so many questions to ask her—how is your sister, how did you come here, do you remember me—but Syrene must remember, she must, because when no one is looking she catches Tana’s eye and makes a little gesture with her hand as though to say _How tall you are now._

Frelia’s pegasus knights serve and protect the royal family, and all the kingdom. Tana’s father had told her one of this regiment would enter her service one day soon, would stay with her and go where she went and keep her safe. It had been something of a warning then, not to sneak off into the forest again, not to disappear without telling anyone, but Tana thinks she would like it if it were Syrene. She does not know yet how to string words together for her real wish, her true wish—she would like it even better, to fly side by side someday.

Maybe later there will be a chance to talk. There’s a glimmer in Syrene’s eye that promises as much, but when their captain calls them to attention she stands as straight as any of them. On impulse Tana stands a little straighter too.

 

* * *

 

**iii.**

 

“Your hair is a most formidable enemy, Princess Tana.” Syrene’s voice is solemn, but Tana sees her bite her lip in the mirror. “But never fear; I am sworn to protect you from all harm.”

“That’s not funny,” Tana says, too sleepy to snap, and covers a yawn with her hand. “You try waking up in the morning unable to see for all your hair.”

“I could cut it for you if it would save you the trouble.”

Tana considers this as Syrene starts to brush. She does not say, _But then you wouldn’t need to come for me in the mornings anymore._ It’s a thought that ill befits a princess, but remember—she is hardly a princess at all, so early in the day, arrayed in a rumpled nightgown with her hair haloing wildly about her head. She must look instead like one of those fell beasts the old folks in town are always going on about, the denizen of some cautionary tale meant to keep children on the path.

It’s no wonder, then, that only Syrene has the patience to tame her hair for her these days; Syrene is a knight of the realm now, and sleeps with a lance by her bed every night as a sign that she knows how to deal with monsters.

In the end, she says, “But I like the way it blows in the wind.”

Syrene raises an eyebrow, but relents. “As you wish, milady.”

The sound of the word _milady_ is peculiar, sometimes, coming from Syrene. It doesn’t weigh as heavily as it does spoken by someone else, less a formal term of address than something light and jesting and somehow secret, the sort of word she might smile while saying if no one else is looking. Tana likes the sound of it said this way, though she can also never help thinking that if she could not be _milady_ at all, to Syrene or anyone, she’d like that even more.

This is a secret she cannot tell even Syrene: Tana wants to be Tana, sometimes wants to be the other things she hears Syrene call her friends in the kitchens and in the guard corps. Names like “dear” and “my girl” and “sweetheart” and “starshine,” names you call a person you can stand beside and look at face to face.

Syrene is easy to love, and so adept at her work that she’ll probably be put in command of her own unit soon. She’s heard whispers to that effect that she’s made it a point to turn her head away from. Tana has little idea how a knight’s duty is determined; perhaps it’s enough that for now she can still think of herself as Syrene’s, and Syrene as hers.

“What do you think?” Syrene taps at the crown of Tana’s head with two fingers when she doesn’t answer right away, gestures for Tana to inspect her own face in the mirror and see how her hair is now smoothed out and twisted into a knot at the back of her head, secured at the nape of her neck with a clasp of pearls.

Tana frowns, almost says it’s too pretty for her, though maybe what she means is too grown-up. “Are we expecting guests today?”

“A dignitary from Rausten will be joining your family for the midday meal. Your mother instructed me specifically to put your hair up.” As always, Syrene hears what she doesn’t say. “Do you not like it?”

“It’s pretty, but you didn’t put any little braids in. Those are my favorite part.”

Tana is sixteen and no longer a child, and old enough to chafe at being treated as such. But it’s different with Syrene, somehow. She doesn’t know yet if it’s better or worse that she feels like she can say what she wants, be a little selfish, speak a little more plainly.

“Then braids you shall have,” Syrene tells her, and unpins the clasp.

 

* * *

 

**iv.**

 

There are no mirrors in the infirmary, or in the barracks. Tana will not see how ugly it all is until just before she goes to bed, when she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the trough of water the girls wash their faces in—the bruise blooming purple and yellow on her left cheek, the jagged cut down her temple, running back into her hairline.

Tana is learning that combat is in many ways about memory, practice, repetition, writing the movements into your every muscle strand until not even the fear of death can stop you from executing them. Earlier she had gotten in close enough that Syrene had forgotten to hold back and struck her across the face with the blunted sparring lance, and though Tana had thought she was going to die then it had not stopped her from turning her body in to break her own fall. She had felt something like a thrill then too, some strange joy at being treated like someone worth a real fight.

Syrene’s face is pale now, her mouth thin, her jaw clenched like she’s grinding her teeth. She holds a wet cloth in her hand and brings it to Tana’s face, cleaning away the dirt and the blood, light and careful for all the tension that has strung her entire body tighter than a bowstring. When the cloth makes contact with the wound Tana forgets to keep her head still and not wince, but Syrene is the one who hisses softly, _tsst!_ through her teeth like it’s her skin that stings at the touch.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” Tana lies. “Please don’t frown so, Syrene.”

Syrene doesn’t contest the lie, but she sighs, tucks back a lock of Tana’s hair and touches her cheek with careful fingers. “It’s bruising already, and that cut will leave a scar.”

“Both of those things are nothing to a soldier. And weren’t you the only one who agreed to train me when no one else would?”

She sees the way most of the recruits balk at the idea of sparring with her, sees the sharp looks her mother shoots her father’s way when they think her back is turned. She heard the whispers, too, from outside the door of their room at night when she first announced her intention to go: _Pray tell, which of your commanders will take her? And take her seriously, at that? They all know what the price is for putting so much as a scratch on the princess._

Syrene is twenty-two now and a little young for a commander, but Tana has always imagined that she is not like the others in many ways besides. Syrene can call her _Tana_ in the training yard and not blink, Syrene puts her own sister through her paces without a second thought—but now Syrene is sitting back and running her fingers through her hair with a breath that seems to shudder down into the very marrow of her bones, and Tana wonders if she might understand a little bit better, now, what being in her place is like.

Syrene is the sort of captain to love her soldiers. She sleeps in the barracks with them and helps them take down their hair at night and comes for them in the sparring ring with as little mercy as they can expect from enemies they as yet only ever imagine. There are many faces to that love; it makes everything that much easier, makes everything that much more difficult.

“Why do you want to be a knight, my girl?” Syrene’s smile is different here in the fading light, weary and gentle, as if she already knows the answer.

 _To become strong, like you. To do good, like you. To live for more than just myself, like you always teach me._ Tana thinks she cannot possibly know.

“Do you think I don’t belong here, too?”

“It’s not that.” Tana likes how Syrene doesn’t think before she answers, doesn’t hesitate even when things are difficult to say. “It’s just not going to be easy. But I know you don’t care for easy things.”

 

* * *

 

**v.**

 

Syrene still smiles when the tent flap parts, still closes her eyes when Tana loops her arms over her neck and brings their foreheads together. As they watch the war take another day, and another, and another, Tana imagines this too is courage of a very rare kind, the kind there won’t even be songs about when everything ends.

“It must be past midnight.” 

“I know, I’m sorry.” Tana curls her fingers in the lengths of Syrene’s hair, still long and straight and shimmering and so like the forest in the way it catches the lantern-light, making shadows. “I didn’t want Eirika to walk back to her tent alone.”

Syrene leans into Tana’s hands, murmurs some wordless sound of understanding before she rises to blow out the candle. They pay so dearly for sleep these days, all of them, and Tana has stopped to wonder more than once if she deserves these nights without armor, these fragile hours when she and Syrene pretend they’re safe enough to do nothing but lean into each other and breathe. Tana is twenty and forgetting who she used to be, losing sight every day of the girl who never imagined, not for a moment, that she would ever see war, could never even in her dreams have anticipated what it would be like. 

When they lie down together Syrene’s hands make slow aimless spirals—through Tana’s hair, up and down the span of her back. Tana can tell the meandering is anything but purposeless, that each path her fingers trace is one she wants to memorize lest she lose the chance to pass that way again. Tana does not want to anticipate a day that one of them might have to imagine this.

“You should sleep too, Syrene. You must be so tired.”

“On the contrary, milady, I’m much more awake than I was before you came.”

“I will stay awake with you, then,” Tana says.

Some nights they talk about the things that keep them awake, which nightmares, which memories. Tana remembers how all the blood in her body had gone cold when she’d seen Syrene surrounded on the ridgeline. There’s an old wound from that day Syrene still carries, a crescent-shaped scar beneath her right shoulder blade where Natasha had cut the arrow out of her, and Tana takes care to only ever rest her head on the other shoulder, on the side of Syrene’s body where her heart beats.

How she had screamed that day, whereas Syrene had only dug her nails into the flesh of Vanessa’s forearm and made no sound. Many times since then Tana’s felt the black claw of that fear prick at her own throat. She knows that at any time it could become real, it always could.

Not tonight, though, not tonight. Tonight Tana can still reach in the dark for a lock of Syrene’s hair, can still weave it into a loose plait with two of her own, moving purely by touch: _Three strands. Left over the middle, right over the middle. This is your life passing through mine. This is how I hold on to you._

It will unravel while they sleep, later on, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the spirit of the thing that matters.

 

* * *

 

**vi.**

 

_“Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows, and fair is the lily of the valley…”_

Tana sings while she works at Syrene’s hair, counting out her brush strokes the way she once matched her steps to the beat of the marching drum. The rest of her unit takes up the tune as they do up the clasps on each other’s ceremonial armor: _Clear is the water that flows from the stream, and my love is fairer than any._  

Today the kingdom is celebrating the first day of spring, and the third battalion is flying at the head of the procession of dancers that will begin at the palace gates and circle the city. It’s the sort of charge that when Tana thinks about it could not have fallen to anyone but Syrene, who knows better than anyone that there’s a place for beauty in these times, and for laughter and for song.

The war taught Tana to do many things with her hands that she could not do before, how to throw a javelin and sharpen a spearhead and set a fractured bone, but somehow doing up Syrene’s hair still feels like an accomplishment. If nothing else it is the chance to do for Syrene what she does for all of them, the only commander in all Frelia who brushes and braids flowers into her soldiers’ hair with her own hands.

“Knot the twine twice over, Vanessa, so it doesn’t come undone. You can add another daisy there at the end, I think. Heads up, girls, heads up! _”_

How utterly typical of Syrene to fuss over them all even as she’s being attended to; Tana nearly bursts into giggles and loses the song on the second verse: _You choose the road, love, and I’ll make the vow, and I’ll be your true love forever_.

She reaches around to the table behind her, drops a basket into Syrene’s lap. “Choose your flowers, Captain.”

Syrene’s hands are as deft around the stems of rose and daffodil and wild oxeye daisy as they’ve ever been around the handle of a lance. The years since the war’s end have left them with much work to be done, a long slow healing even Tana needs to struggle sometimes to see, but she decides she’ll happily take the sight of those hands as payment for all the hope she has to keep believing in.

“‘Fair is the lily of the valley,’ milady,” Syrene says.

It’s enough, Tana thinks, that Syrene’s eyes still turn soft in the mirror when she looks at her, that she is still here to pass Tana a single sprig of white bell-shaped blooms. Tana knows lily of the valley means happiness is returning—will return any day now, any day.

“‘And my love is fairer than any,’” she answers, smiling, and begins to braid.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Tana and the rest of the knights sing in the final scene is a slightly altered version of the Irish folk song “Red Is the Rose.”
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
